September 22, 2017

We see a familiar story here. Paul and Barnabas start a beautiful church in this city. They preach to Gentiles, people believe and decide to follow Jesus. The church was growing, they led people and taught people and trained leaders. Things were going great.

As usual, when things were up, the enemy came and tried to ruin it. Paul, Barnabas, and the church were being persecuted now because of the changing culture. The religious leaders, political leaders, started a commotion and drove them out. They were run out of the city. They had to leave their church, the work they had started, and move on as they were no longer welcome there.

Their response is the really amazing part. They simply moved on. They had to move on. It was sad. It was unfortunate, but God was still calling them to do something. The gospel still needed to be spread, so after starting a church and leading people, they had to leave it all behind to start over.

Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes things get rough. Followers of Jesus ignore the bad, they see past the struggle, they focus on the end. They press forward. Like Paul would say later in his epistles, we press on towards the mark, we don’t stop, we know God has given us something greater to do and we do it.

What has God called you to do? What gets in the way of you doing it? What will you do to press on?